University Distinguished Professors

Two SMU faculty members have been named University Distinguished Professors, as announced by the Office of the Provost. Caroline Brettell of the Department of Anthropology, Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, and Ndiva Kofele-Kale of the Dedman School of Law were recommended by an Advisory Committee to the Provost comprised of 4 current holders of SMU endowed chairs and 2 current holders of University Distinguished Professorships.

The University Distinguished Professorships were created in 1982 by SMU’s Board of Trustees to honor outstanding faculty members who meet the highest standards of academic achievement. University Distinguished Professors are appointed in perpetuity and receive cash awards of $10,000 per year for a 5-year rolling term.

Caroline Brettell, Dedman Family Distinguished Professor in Dedman College, served as chair of the Department of Anthropology from 1994 to 2004. She also served as president of the Faculty Senate in 2001-02 and director of the Women’s Studies Program from 1989 to 1994. She was honored with the SMU Distinguished University Citizen Award in 2004. Her research interests include migration and immigration, the cross-cultural study of gender, the intersections of anthropology and history, and European ethnography. Brettell has been a member of the SMU faculty since 1988. From July 2006 to June 2008, she served as acting dean of Dedman College.

Ndiva Kofele-Kale first came to SMU in 1988 as a visiting professor from the University of Tennessee School of Law. He became a full-time faculty member in the Dedman School of Law in fall 1989 and a full professor in 1998. An expert in international dispute resolution, human rights and public international law, Kofele-Kale served from 1990-96 as associate editor of The International Lawyer, a joint publication of the American Bar Association and the Dedman School of Law. He teaches courses in public and private international law and business associations.

Three members of the SMU faculty have been named University Distinguished Professors, as announced by the Office of the Provost. The professorships have been awarded to Greg Warden, Art History; Sherry Smith, History; and Cordelia Candelaria, English.

The University Distinguished Professorships were created in 1982 by SMU’s Board of Trustees to honor outstanding faculty members who meet the highest standards of academic achievement. University Distinguished Professors are appointed in perpetuity and receive cash awards of $10,000 per year for a five-year rolling term.

Greg Warden has taught at SMU since 1982, chairing the Art History Division for six years and serving as associate dean for academic affairs in the Meadows School of the Arts since 1998. Since 1995, he has directed the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project and the SMU excavations at the Etruscan site of Poggio Colla, about 22 miles northeast of Florence. The University’s Poggio Colla field school in archaeology is open to students from around the world, and students from more than 60 universities have participated in it.

Warden’s major interest is the art and culture of ancient Italy, but his expertise – as both an archaeologist and an art historian – extends to a broader range of art from the ancient Mediterranean. His research interests include ancient metalworking technologies; Greek, Etruscan and Roman bronzes and decorative arts; and Roman architecture and patronage. He was director of the SMU-in-Italy summer program in Florence, Orvieto and Rome from 1987 to 1998 and received a Rotunda Award for outstanding teaching from the SMU student body in 1985-86. In addition, he was named the 1996-97 Meadows Foundation Distinguished Teaching Professor. He holds a Ph.D. in classical and Near Eastern archaeology from Bryn Mawr College.

Sherry Smith joined the SMU faculty in 1999 and currently serves as director of graduate studies in the Clements Department of History and as associate director of the University’s Clements Center for Southwest Studies. Her research focuses on the intersection of western, Native American and United States cultural history. She teaches courses on the American West in the 19th and 20th centuries, women in the West, and Native American history, among others.

Currently serving as president of the Western History Association, Smith is the author of Sagebrush Soldier: Private William Earl Smith’s View of the Sioux War of 1876 (University of Oklahoma Press) and The View From Officers’ Row: Army Perceptions of Western Indians (University of Arizona Press). Her most recent book, Reimagining Indians: Native Americans Through Anglo Eyes, 1880-1940 (Oxford University Press), won the 2001 James W. Rawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians for best book on race relations, as well as SMU’s Godbey Authors Award. Smith is also editor of The Future of the Southern Plains, published by the University of Oklahoma Press in 2003. She received her Ph.D. in history from the University of Washington.

Cordelia Chávez Candelaria, currently a Regents Professor at Arizona State University, will become a University Distinguished Professor when she begins her new duties as SMU’s dean of Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences in July. As chair of ASU’s Department of Transborder Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies, she helped establish its Southwest Borderlands Initiative to strengthen studies in this discipline and to recruit and retain underrepresented faculty.

Candelaria’s numerous publications include Seeking the Perfect Game: Baseball in American Literature and Chicano Poetry: A Critical Introduction. She also served as executive editor of the two-volume Encyclopedia of Latino Popular Culture and has been editor or co-editor of 10 books, monographs and periodicals. Among her numerous awards, in 2005 she received the Outstanding Latina Cultural Award in Literary Arts and Publications from the American Association for Higher Education Hispanic Caucus. In 2001 Candelaria was named Scholar of the Year by the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies. She received her Ph.D. in American literature and linguistics from Notre Dame.